Posts from — February 2009

Last night, a debate over the prospects for catastrophic climate change was held between Dr. John Christy, , noted climate scientist and Alabama State Climatologist, and Dr. William Schlesinger, President of the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies and former dean of Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

The debate was videotaped here. [Read more →]

Joe Romm at Climate Progress reports that:

Both [John Holdren and Jane Lubchenco] have been told not to make news [at their confirmation hearings], so it could be as boring as Energy Secretary Chu’s hearing.

My eight-part series  on Dr. Holdren’s energy-related views documents a troubled history of exaggeration and intolerance that deserves some hard (and unavoidably) embarrassing questions. We will know in a matter of hours if this turns out to be the case. [Read more →]

On Tuesday, the National Audubon Society released a report “Birds and Climate Change,” which interpreted an average northern shift of the over-wintering range of a large collection of North American bird species over the course of the past 40 years or so. Audubon decided that this range shift was due, in part, to “global warming.” Therefore, it was bad and action must be taken to avert it:

It is the complete picture of widespread movement and the failure of some species to move at all that illustrate the impacts of climate change on birds. They are sending us a powerful signal that we need to 1) take policy action to curb climate change and its impacts, and 2) help wildlife and ecosystems adapt to unavoidable habitat changes, even as we work to curb climate change itself.

What the Audubon Society failed to mention [Read more →]

Roger Pielke Jr. of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado has started an interesting blog series concerning the growing realism on the political side of the climate-change debate.  He begins:

The political consensus surrounding climate policy is collapsing. If you are not aware of this fact you will be very soon. The collapse is not due to the cold winter in places that you may live or see on the news. It is not due to years without an increase in global temperature. It is not due to the overturning of the scientific consensus on the role of human activity in the global climate system.

It is due to the fact [Read more →]

Europe taxes gasoline at $3-4 a gallon, imposes the world’s most stringent fuel economy standards, and mandates the blending of biofuels into the region’s motor fuel supply. Yet European Union (EU) transport-sector greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increased by 26 percent from 1990 to 2006, according to “Beyond Transport Policy,” a recent European Environment Agency (EEA) report. Why have these policies failed to reduce GHG transport-sector emissions? [Read more →]

Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) spoke here in Houston today at a conference sponsored by the Cambridge Energy Research Associates (hosted by CERA chairman Daniel Yergin). Trying to defuse controversy (he is addressing an industry that he dislikes), Markey told the Houston Chronicle: “The headline should be: ‘I agree with T. Boone Pickens’.” [Read more →]

Much attention was garnered last year by those, like T. Boone Pickens, who predicted oil prices rising to $200-300 per barrel with a year or two, but less attention has been paid to the recently revised forecast of the US Department of Energy, published in preview of its Annual Energy Outlook. The Outlook appeared in January, when prices had already plummeted, but was presumably written earlier, when prices were higher. It included the seemingly moderate forecast of prices rising to $70 by 2010 and $110 by 2015, as the figure shows. [Read more →]

While I’m quoted in the Houston Chronicle’s CERAweek column on an optimistic note, developments with the “stimulus” package make me less optimistic by the day. What I told Tom Fowler of the Chronicle, when discussing the anti-oil mentality of Representative Ed Markey, now chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, was [Read more →]

Many people believe that national security would be advanced if we reduce our petroleum usage, because, goes this theory, we would be funneling less money to the Middle East which then would reduce, if not eliminate, funding for terrorists who wish to harm the U.S. (more on this in the future).  Ex-CIA Director, James Woolsey, for instance, is reported to have said that we need  “destroy the strategic power” of petroleum by making us not less dependent on foreign oil, but less dependent on oil, period. See, also, here.  [Read more →]

My recent editorial in Investor’s Business Daily, “What Happened to Business Prudence?”, offers examples of politically correct and politically derived business practices in order to show how such “profit” opportunities can be bad for both shareholders and the broader economy. [Read more →]